This was the last of director Otto Preminger's bloated, all-star epic dramas, after "Exodus", "Advise and Consent", "The Cardinal" and "In Harm's Way"........the withering scorn and ridicule heaped upon "Hurry Sundown" effectively ended the Preminger parade of melodramatic, multi-character circuses......forced to go back to more modest films, the famously tyrannical director's downward slide began.......
Preminger, like many an aging director uncomfortable with the rapid changes in both filmmaking and the culture, went on to make awkward, out-of-touch little movies, most of them unwatchable on any level.......
Bad as they were, none of Preminger's subsequent films could duplicate the fun of enveloping yourself in the epic toxicity of "Hurry Sundown"......his Southern-Fried grand opera indictment of racism, overacted like rogue Tennessee Williams loud enough for the cheap seats to hear.....
Before we start in on the movie, we feel honor bound to point out that few film directors so embraced black performers like Preminger, having produced and directed "Carmen Jones" and "Porgy and Bess"......(though he did the latter film no favors, shooting the entirety of it in long shots...the appalled Gershwin estate buried the film, never to see the light of day(or a projector) again.
By the time he got around to "Hurry Sundown", based on a trashy bestseller fresh off the airport paperback spinner racks, Preminger's worst condescending instincts overtook him. Subtlety and sub-text had worked their way into films of the 60's, but Preminger directed this movie like a florid, overheated 1940's potboiler, encouraging his actors to dial up the histrionics..........it was a titanic face off between already worn out caricatures....the noble, gentle-hearted poor black folk versus a hateful collection of drawling, Southern cracker gargoyles, freely flinging about the "n" world.
Even at close to two and a half hours, the film's spectacularly grotesque plot and characters still keep us riveted.......a mint julep trainwreck to savor. Set in post-World War 2 Georgia, the film pits a depraved, greedy wanna-be land developer (Michael Caine) against two army veteran sharecroppers, one black, one white (Robert Hooks, John Philip Law), whose side by side farms stand in the way of Caine's get-rich-quick real estate dreams.
Before it grinds to a halt, melodrama explodes all over the place, along with huge amounts of construction dynamite.....(after a while, it feels like more stuff's getting blown up than in "Kelly's Heroes" and "Dirty Dozen" combined)
And like a "Welcome To Deep South Hell" fun house ride, there's a great garish variety of weird displays to pop up in front of you.........Jane Fonda, giving it her all as Caine's near-nympho Southern Belle wife, mother of their young son, who's been reduced to a non-stop wailing vegetable ever since Caine's mistreatment of the boy as an infant. (That doesn't quell Fonda's raging hot-to-trotness for Caine, including a now legendary scene where she teasingly fellates his saxaphone.....don't ask us to explain,,,,,you hadda be there....)
Even more cracker barrel monsters show up to entertain you, including the town's premier showcase racist, Judge Purcell (overplayed for comic relief by Burgess Meredith......sounding like Jeff Sessions on uppers)....and a full coterie of closet Klansmen who hang around the General Store in case they're needed to terrorize and arrest blacks, blow stuff up....or both.
As for film's oppressed black population, they fight back by gathering 'round to sing a Church spiritual version of the movie's title song while plying the dumb-and-dumbest town Sheriff (George Kennedy) with fried chicken and apple pie........honest, we're not making any of this up....
If nothing else, Otto Preminger brought the races together with the release of "Hurry Sundown".......everyone, regardless of color, came together in loathing and scoffing at the movie. The Preminger Big Budget/Big Issue/Big Stars gravy train finally flew off the rails, never to roll again.
50 years later, it appears only the BQ had any desire to break into the time capsule and have another peek. We don't regret it......the movie's still insanely compelling in all its glorious wrong-headedness........and sadly, we have to wonder if race relations have gotten any better than what's depicted in this film......our current, ridiculously unqualified Attorney General could be just another "Hurry Sundown" character. appointed by the biggest, most raging racist in the world....
As a movie, it's strictly a one star atrocity (*).....as a deeply guilty pleasure, it's priceless and will live forever.
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